Architect:Architect Berthold Lubetkin, originally from Georgia, was
the architect behind the Finsbury Health Centre. Lubetkin studied art
in Moscow, was born in 1901 and died in 1990. Lubetkin believed
that art and architecture could make a political point and has been
quoted saying “Nothing is too good for ordinary people” Lubetkin considered the centre to be a relaxed, communal club, to inspire the
public to use the centres services by making them feel comfortable
using them. “They can just drop in”
Date of build: The process of building the Finsbury Health Centre
began, including all planning until final construction, in 1937 and
ended in1938. The centre was notorious both for its architectural
class and its new methodology to centralized health. It was a building
there was no precedent for, and is often considered the first modernist design even commissioned by a public client with a political constituency, which was revolutionary in the 1930’s. In 1936 Tecton pre
sented 4 designs, the costliest design was chosen due to its high stories and better quality finishes. The design was originally estimated to
cost £55,000 but difficulties on the build saw the total cost rise to over
£61,000. Purchase of the site from the Marquees of Northampton
was only finalized early in 1937, despite plans for the Health Centre.
Other Lubetkin projects of the period include: the Priory Green, Spa
Green and Hallfield Estates.ConstructionThe Centre included murals
by Gordon Cullen telling visitors to “live out of doors” as much as you
can, designed to encourage the people of Finsbury to also take ownership of their own health outside of the medical centre. It was while
the centre was serving as a World War II first aid station that the
murals were white washed over.
History: Dr Chuni Lal Katial was the chairman of the public health
committee who contacted architectural practice Tecton who commenced a plan for a centre. Lubetkin was Tecton’s leading architect
of the time and was the idyllic man for the job.

In 1970 the centre was listed as a special architectural interest and later became
Grade 1 listed. Watkins Gray Woodgate refurbished the interior in 1982, by this time
many of the original services were deplete, and the centre, despite remaining a health
centre, offered different services.
In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of the centres existence, Islington Health District
commissioned Avanti Architects to review the buildings exterior with site to restore the
buildings exterior. John Allan of Avanti Architects knew Lubetkin himself and had restored Lubetkin’s London Zoo penguin pool. Allan’s report highlighted corrosion in
many parts of the centre, including: external columns, retaining walls and canopies,
Allan reported that almost all external concrete surfaces required treatment from
weathering and deterioration. Allan’s report also showed that a lot of the exterior tiling
was either cracked or completely missing.
The distinctive glass bricks seen immediately at the entrance of the building have all
been replaced over time with larger bricks. To this day all of the centres window
frames are original despite being severely corroded. All of the centre’s insulated glass
was replaced as most of it had been cracked due to sandbagging during the war. The
cost of Allan’s planned restoration was estimated at £1,200,000; however, he was
only given £350,000 to complete the restoration.During World War II, the centre was
turned into a bandaging centre for wounded civilians
.
Despite the centre not being bombed itself, the threat of bombardment saw sandbags
being piled onto and around the centre not long after the building was finished. The
sandbagging resulted in many of the entrances glass bricks cracking under the weight
of the protective bags.In March 2008, the Islington Primary Care Trust announced
that they were left helpless but to sell the building. On 18th August 2008 a petition
was started to prevent a sell-off of the Finsbury Health Centre and removal of its services, the petition was handed to Alan Johnson, British labour party politician, in January 2009 with over 1800 signatures, and provoked a letter from Ben Bradshaw, the
Minister for Health Services. On January 29th 2009 the Islington Primary Care Trust
(now NHS Islington) agreed to move the services from Finsbury Health Centre and
sell the building.

A 1:5000 map of my journey to the Finsbury Health centre from Farringdon station

These are all my own images taken
from my first visit to the Finsbury
Health Centre, shown in my own
layout. Each image has a coloured
dot at the bottom of it (central)
which corrisponds to a matching
dot on the map, this shows where
the picture was taken.

My first impressions of the Finsbury Health Centre suprised me. As i had pre-researched the building and found out about its groundbreaking characteristics for itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
time, I assumed that the buildings keeping and mainatance would be ofhigh order.
However, I have greeted by a front facade of broken bricks and tiles. Despite being
able to see the buildings interesting structures, materials and facades, I could not
help but feel the building could have been looked after better. I also wondered what
the building would have looked like with allof its service pipes placed on the buildings exterior as originally designed by Berthold Lubetkin.

For this section, I looked at the
airflow within the Finsbury
Health Centre as well as how
air can get in and out of the
building. After discovering that
the Centre featured a wet ceiling heating system, I evaluated the downward path of warm
air throughout the Finsbury
Health Centre due to the ceiling
heating. In addition to the ceiling heating, radiators were also
added as the ceiling heating
took a while to heat up. Here I
have taken an existing plan of
the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; basement and
gone over the top with red lines
to represent the flow and distribution of the hot water for the
heating. I have also colour
coded sections of the building
according to how they are
heated. For example, the riser
closest to the top right hand
room heats only tat room on
this floor. This is shown by that
section being a different colour
to the other heating segments
within the building.

in this section of 01AIR I began to look at the air movement within the Finsbury Health Centre, I began by
showing the downward movemt of hot air (Right) caused
by the ceiling heating system within the Finsbury Health
Centre. As hot air rises, most of the heat will cling to the
ceiling and eventually fall through to the rest of the building. The heating strips within the ceiling are set in con
cret, which absorbs and holds a large amount of the heat
conveyed by the system, helping to heat the Centre.

As the ceiling heatem system can take a while to heat up, the
Centre has also more recently installed radiators within the
building. These are much faster to heat the building and it could
be argued convey heat in a more efficient way, with the ht air
rising from the radiator to the ceiling, moving along the ceiling
and then falling to the floor in corners. The ceiling heating
system is now redundant but i believe this was part of Lubetkinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
revolutionary design of modernism. Left is my drawing of the
convection of hot air within one secting of the buildings frontal
waiting room.

Whilst looking at 02LIGHT i tried to examine different aspects to the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; light,
looking at artificial and natural light aswell
as how shadows fall both on and within the
building due to both light sources.I took
these images to present aspects of the
Health Centre that either create, or display
light, with the windows allowing light
through into the building. Artificial lighting
lighting the interior and shadows being
caused on the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; exterior.

For this section, I looked at the suns path
over the Finsbury Health Centre, from
this information I created a diagram of
the suns angle and height at different
times during the day and within different
seasons. I also looked at how light gets
into the centre. One light access point I
found very interesting is the glass brick
build
constructed wall at the front of the building. This allows light to project through
the glass, making the beams more concentrated. I did a drawing of how light
gets through these bricks and where
shadows will be, this can be seen on the
following page. The distinctive glass
bricks seen immediately at the entrance
of the building have all been replaced
over time with larger bricks. To this day
all of the centres window frames are
original despite being severely corroded.
All of the centre’s insulated glass was replaced as most of it had been cracked
due to sandbagging during the war. The
cost of Allan’s planned restoration was
estimated at £1,200,000; however, he
was only given £350,000 to complete the
restoration.

Here is my drawing of the windows on the
North West side of the building. The windows
cover the entire North West facade of the
building. The window sills are made from
steel and teak. To create the image i used a
picture I took on my original visit to the Finsbury Health Centre and placed the image
over a lightbox, this allowed me to trace the
dominant lines of the window frames.

Here are some of my own photographs of
the Finsbury Health Centre, in these
images i tried to show some of the ground
and materials that interested me from the
building. The most notable in the glass
brick facade at the front of the building, this
wall allows a great amount of light in to
acheive Lubetkins â&#x20AC;&#x153;open feelâ&#x20AC;? plans. othr
interesting materials include cream coloured clay tiles, steel and teak window framed
and the combination of these materials

Here is my drawing of the
windows on the North East
side of the building. The
windows make up a curved
glass feature wall on the
North West facade of the
building. The bricks bring
lots of light into the building
as the inner circles of the
bricks (seen in my drawing)
magnify the light. To create
the image i used a picture I
took on my original visit to
the Finsbury Health Centre
and placed the image over a
lightbox, this allowed me to
trace the dominant lines of
the bricks.

Here is an image i have created using an existing
plan of the basement I found on the internet. On
top of the plan i have added red lines to indicate
where water for the heating system will travel
around the basement, starting at the two boilers
seen to the right. The cycle will consist of a flow
and return looping the building by entering the
buildings
buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 8 risers. The risers allow the pipes to
access other levels of the building to heat them. I
have also used colour coding to represent how the
buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ceiling heating would have worked. The
ceiling heating will be separated into 8 sections
(one for each riser) all the way up the building,
each section of the building will then be heated by
rise This image is how i
the relevant or closest riser.
believe the hot water system (for ceiling heating)
works within the Finsbury health centre. I repeated
the same process again using green lines to show
cold water coming from the risers where necessary. This system begins at the top of the building
near the theatre at the back of the building which
is where the water tank would be situated. As this
system uses gravity to create pumping
water and valves to reduce heavy flow, the water
runs down the piping for the cold water, which runs
along the same risers as the heating system, all
the way up the building. The cold water is required
for: Hand was basins, baths and toilets.

This diagram is
based on a plan of
thew building I
found on the internet, the diagram
shows my proposed layout of the
mains water
system, as in the
basement only 2
services require
mains water, here i
have shown the
mains water entering the centre from
thew street and
then finding its way
to the Head Room.

This diagram is based
on a plan of thew building I found on the internet, the diagram shows
my proposed layout of
the mains water
system, as in the base
ment only 2 services
require mains water,
here i have shown the
mains water entering
the centre from thew
street and then finding
its way to the Head
Room. The diagram
also shows the elctrical
and hot & cold running
tank water throughout
the building, aswell as
the buildings piping for
its famous wet ceiling
heating system.

Here is my diagram of how electrics
could be fed throughout the Finsbury
Health Centre (yellow) as well as other
services. From the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; original
plans that can be found on the internet, I found the access point and main
switchboard for the building, from here
I knew that the water boilers and
pumps would both need power, as well
as access to each of the risers to allow
power to move upwards within the
building. Heating ducts and plumbing
were transferred inside the building by
the council, which altered one of Lubetkinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main guiding principles. This infuriated Lubetkin and led to him to refusing to visit the centre for over 40
years.

This diagram is based
on a plan of thew building I found on the internet, the diagram shows
my proposed layout of
the centreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wet celing
heating system, aswell
as the hot and cold
running water and the
electrical services.

For many of my own
images i used an existing
plan of the Finsbury
Health Centre and superimposed servical pipes
and paths ontop using a
colour coded system. I
found this original plan of
the Centre. I found this
plan very useful as it allowed me to know where
the risers, boilers, pumps
and main switchboards
are. This allowed me to
make educated guessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; as
to where the Centreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s services would have been
run between each riser
and its cycle or entry and
exit of the building.

Despite being disallowed access to the
buildings interior, i
did manage to get a
couple of snaps of
the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; waiting
frrom at the entrabce
of the building. The
waiting room features the famous
brick wall. To create
this image i traced
the dominant line of
my own photograph
of the waiting room.

Here is my proposal for a gravity grey
water recycling system within the
building. This would involve creating
slopes on the roof made from tapered
insulation with a waterproof membrane
sheet. These slopes would create
gravitational force pushing rainwater
into a gully on the roof, show in my
proposal. The rain water flows down a
RWP (Rain water pipe) and branches
off into a filter. Some of the rain water
captured will go towards local reed
banks as not all of the rain water can
be collected in the grey water tank.
After going through filtration we now
have grey water, which can be used in
WCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. There would be a grey water
tank storing this water controlled by a
ball valve which isolates the water
when the tank is full. This grey water
then runs along GWP (Grey water
WC Out of grey water
pipes) into WCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.
tank also comes an overflow as a
safety device. When the grey water is
flushed, it discharges into a SVP (Soil
vent pipe) which leads the foul to a
sewage plant.

Here is y drawing of the
South West side of the
building. To create the
image i placed an image i
took on one of my visits to
the building over a lightbox
and traced the dominant
lines of the picture. In the
picture was some industrial
boarding (front of picture) i
left this steel fencing in the
picture as i believe redevelopment would be a
huge part of the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
future if it were to take
place.